This July 16, 1981 file photo shows baseball union leader Marvin Miller speaking to reporters after rejecting a proposal to end a baseball strike, in New York. Miller died Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2012 in New York. He was 95. (AP Photo/Howard, File)

My goodness, I detested Marvin Miller in the 1970s and 1980s, probably as much as Charles O. Finley, Calvin Griffith, George Argyros and the rest of the skinflint owners did.

Heck, you didn’t even know who was going to be stationed at third base in a year’s time. Players were just packing up and leaving. Baseball fans couldn’t count on anything thanks to this new free-agency thing. Even the players whose bubble gum cards made us groan when we opened the pack were skipping town. Maybe they knew we were doing that. Maybe we should have been nicer.

Worst of all, grandstand seats didn’t cost $3.50 anymore. Prices were going up because these big salaries had to be funded. Suddenly, there was no stability and the whole baseball world clearly had gone screwy. Loyalty had vanished.

If you were a serious baseball fan back then, it was all very traumatic. And that Marvin Miller fellow, the union boss, was at the heart of it, stirring things up and ruining the traditions of the grand old game. Grrrrrr.

Manager Birdie Tebbetts had called him a communist. Leo Durocher once tried to hit him with fungoes as Miller held a union meeting in center field. Why not? This guy was messing up everything.

Of course, then you get a little older and develop a better understanding of the term “fair play.” When you’re young, you don’t even know who “the man” is, never mind wanting to stick it to him. But then it becomes clear: The players didn’t create Marvin Miller — the owners did. If they hadn’t been so tightfisted, so unwilling to fairly compensate their employees, so determined to treat them all as less than human beings, there might never have been a Marvin Miller.

Miller, who died Tuesday, Nov. 27, at the age of 95, didn’t just stick it to them, he smacked them with a crowbar. And that’s always so much easier to do when you’re in the right. The owners deserved it. If they had behaved better, perhaps the whole process of the players bettering themselves could have been accomplished with less labor strife and turmoil. However, they weren’t willing to give an inch.

We’ve all heard the stories about how Calvin Griffith would deduct $3.25 from a Twin’s paycheck if he caught him throwing a baseball into the stands. But the real story was how most owners treated players as nothing more than assets and debits on a ledger page. They would do anything to keep salaries low. And if a guy got hurt in the line of duty, well, too bad. Those are the breaks. Clean out your locker.

Now the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction that it is ridiculous. The average salary is about $3 million per season. I don’t feel bad for these players, many of whom have no idea what their predecessors went through. They have the upper hand today. But the owners got their comeuppance after a century of mistreating the ballplayers. And in our society, there is no such thing as a happy medium.

We can specifically point to the moment baseball changed forever. No, it wasn’t when Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally were declared freed agents after playing out their option year. It was a year earlier, when Charlie Finley failed to make an annuity payment on behalf of pitcher Catfish Hunter and was declared to be in breach of contract. Hunter was set free.

What we witnessed next created the template for things to come. Twenty out of 24 clubs made lavish offers to Hunter, who ended up signing with the Yankees for five years and $3.2 million — an unheard of sum at the time. That’s when ballplayers came to the realization that 1) free agency was going to be more lucrative than anyone could have imaged because 2) the owners were nuts and would undercut one another whenever possible.

In retrospect, Miller shouldn’t been the object of my derision. It should have been the bosses, “the man,” for trying to keep the little guy down. Now the former little guys are running the show and “the man” is running for cover, thanks to Marvin Miller.

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